There are several interesting health-related articles over at the Los Angeles Times at the moment, but this one in particular caught my eye:

Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected

Earlier breast development is now so typical that the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society urged changing the definition of "normal" development. Until 10 years ago, breast development at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist. Then a landmark study in the April 1997 journal Pediatrics written by Marcia Herman-Giddens, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of African Americans and 15% of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Two years later, the society suggested changing what it considered medically normal.

The new "8" -- the medically suggested definition for abnormally early breast development -- is, the society says, 7 for white girls and 6 for African American girls.

Like some of the mom-scientists quoted in the article, this whole thing makes me twitchy. My daughter the second grader was upset because one of her classmates is getting breasts, and where are hers? What the heck is going on with this? No one knows, and no one is really even sure how we can do the experiment at this point. We're awash in all kinds of potential culprits - or maybe it's just a result of better nutrition? Mother Nature doesn't expect us to have such reliable access to food. But even then... it just doesn't seem like a good idea for the reproductive plumbing to mature so far ahead of the rest of the body structure.